LONDON, Feb. 28 (Xinhuanet) -- A male Briton pleaded guilty Mondayto charges of involvement in a failed attempt to blow up a US-bound aircraft in 2001.

    Sajid Badat, 25, from Gloucester, England, is the first person to be convicted of terrorist offenses in Britain since the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.

    He was charged with conspiring with shoe bomber Richard Reid and a Belgian, Nizar Trabelsi, of making an explosive device and smuggling it aboard the aircraft.

    Reid was arrested after trying to detonate the device aboard anAmerican Airlines flight flying from Paris to Miami on Dec. 22, 2001, just three months after the Sept. 11 attacks. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in the United States.

    "It is clear the plan was that Reid and Badat would bring down a passenger aircraft at similar times in late December that year,"prosecutor Richard Horwell said.

    Badat "admitted that he was asked to conduct a shoe bombing like Reid" when he was arrested in Britain last November, the indictment said.

    According to the indictment, Badat had been trained to become asuicide bomber in Afghanistan and Pakistan but lost his nerve and withdrew from the plot. He then returned to Britain on Dec. 10, 2001, with the device in his possession.

    Badat kept the device at his home in Gloucester, said the indictment.

    The detonating cords on Reid's device matched the cord on Badat's bomb, prosecutors said. Enditem